Thursday, September 10, 2009

Bioethics, meets Sports

Wow. I'm fascinated to see what comes of the case of Caster Semeyna. She is an 18 year old female who apparently is sterile, as she has internal male testes instead of ovaries. But she apparently also has a uterus. She is dominating her track events because she has massive amounts of testosterone, but is not guilty of steroid use and hasn't broken any competition rules.

So now what? Let her continue to compete against women? Make her compete against men? Don't let her compete at all? She is at an advantage compared to the other women, but is it truly "unfair" if nature made her that way? Is it any more unfair than a swimmer with ridiculously large flipper like feet, or a bicyclist with unusually large heart/lungs?

I'm curious about the chromosomal tests that were run. Regardless, a very interesting situation.

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